Amazon’s Alexa, a voice-powered digital personal assistant, is the latest in a long series of innovative services from the Seattle-based company.Amazon has already used the Amazon Prime program, which offers free shipping and other perks, to build a massive, fiercely loyal following for the brand.Alexa was built into the Echo,Amazon’s high-end smart home device, as well as the company’s less expensive Echo Dot and Tap products.The Amazon Echo Dot offers functionality and quality similar to the original Echo at a fraction of the price.With the smart home industry growing every year, this may be Amazon’s way of getting ahead of the market indicating that it will continue to focus on smart-home technologies.To expand Alexa’s reach beyond the home device, the company has also granted users access to Alexa through a smartphone app.

Amazon Choice
If you’ve searched around on Amazon, you have probably seen the “Amazon’s Choice” badge on some products (see above image) and wondered what it is.The logo marks the items that will be chosen by Alexa when she is given the relevant keywords for that product.Amazon has already confirmed that Amazon’s Choice is the program that determines which products Alexa purchases for users.While there is currently no option to submit a product to the Amazon’s Choice program, the company has revealed some of the requirements for being chosen.If an item isn’t available via Prime, Alexa will not be able to place the order for the customer.She will let the buyer know there is not a Prime offer on the product and she will send the product to their Alexa App for manual purchase.We have identified a few key points that will help you get on Alexa’s good side including capturing an initial sale for consumables, quick shipping times, excellent product feedback, best search engine optimization (SEO) practices,and, most importantly, making your item available via Amazon Prime.

Let’s look at each of these five points in greater detail.

1.Make It Available On Prime
The first step to having your product accessible to Amazon Alexa customers is to be available on Amazon Prime.If you aren’t familiar with Prime, it allows customers to subscribe via a monthly or yearly fee to have all of their items shipped with two-day shipping.Items mostly have to be Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) to be a part of the Prime program.The FBA program has third-party merchants send their products to Amazon warehouses where Amazon handles delivery, returns, and customer service.While the eligibility requirements are intense, this new program makes it possible for a merchant to have products available for Prime and still ship from their location.Amazon’s intention is to have the site eventually only support Prime offers.We highly recommend anyone who is interested in having long-term sales on Amazon investigate the Prime program.

2.Send Customers to Amazon for the Initial Sale
If a merchant sells products that are consumables — something that will hopefully be purchased by the same customer multiple times — that seller’s strategy will vary from one who sells products that are one-time purchases.In this case, the next most important thing is making sure that your Amazon listings have been ordered by as many buyers as possible.This significantly enhances the possibility your product will be the default selection for re-orders for those buyers if they start ordering from Alexa.For consumable products, it is crucial to get that first Amazon order so that Alexa will continue to order from you in the future.A seller whose products are consumables, has a greater incentive to drive sales to their Amazon page than to drive sales to their independent e-commerce website.Their marketing plan and overall sales strategy should change to drive customers to their Amazon listings first.It would be better to send potential customers to a landing page on your website.This stand-alone page can feature more information about the product and highlight its unique properties.Follow up this information with a link
saying “If you are ready to buy, make a purchase on Amazon.”

3.Manage Shipping Time
This can be frustrating because you must attempt to manage your product’s shipping time without having direct control over what Amazon does with your inventory.Amazon has been clear that shipping speed is an important part of earning the Amazon’s Choice badge.We know that this speed varies depending on where Amazon is holding your inventory.It is important to have ample stock to facilitate this distribution.If you only have a limited amount of stock, your product will not be in as many warehouses, slowing the shipping speed.A smart seller will manage inventory size and keep 4-6 weeks of stock with Amazon at any given moment,while not going above 2-3 months of stock to avoid storage fees.

4.Manage Product Reviews
There are several services available to Amazon sellers that use follow-up emails to encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews.They send the unhappy people to your customer service department, offering you the opportunity to solve their problems.Keep in mind that buyers can remove their old negative reviews, so it is worth reaching out to reviewers who weren’t happy to see if you can remedy the situation.

5.Optimize Items For Amazon SEO
The most important thing to realize is that Amazon is not Google.It looks different indicators to decide if a search was successful.Unlike Google, Amazon doesn’t care much about click through rate (CTR); dwell time or unique,fresh content.What it is looking at is if presenting your product for a keyword search results in a sale.There are several things you can do to get higher search rankings, which in turn improves your chance of getting into the Amazon’s Choice program.

Here are the best ways to optimize a product for Amazon searches:

Images
Make sure to use high-quality images on product pages.Images are your salesperson.Look at the Amazon sales guidelines for the category and follow the rules, using as many images as are allowed.Make sure each picture is at least 1000 by 1000 pixels to allow desktop users to zoom in for closer details.The zoom feature is a proven way to increase sales conversion — your most important metric.

Title
The title is the most important factor in getting a product to rank for certain searches.Luckily, Amazon tells the best title formula for virtually every category.For example, a particular category might specify an ideal title has product color, then brand name, then model, and then size.We have found if sellers focus on readability, include critical information and stay away from cheap marketing phrases, their conversions increase.

Bullets and Descriptions
It used to be good advice to focus on the bullet points in the listings since they showed “above the fold” or before a user had to scroll to see the rest of the product page.According to Amazon’s terms of service, the bullet points and description don’t necessarily contribute to ranking organically on Amazon.However, we have found that they do make a difference in determining whether a product is eligible to run sponsored product ads for certain search terms.Sponsored product ads are Amazon’s pay-per-click advertising program.

Keywords
Keywords are incredibly important on Amazon, and while it looks like there’s only space for one to five keywords,there are actually thousands of characters available.Sellers should utilize every keyword possible in the structured keyword area on the back end of a product listing.It’s possible to fit upwards of seven words per text box, and sellers should stuff them every possible relevant keyword.There’s no need to play games with punctuation or to repeat keywords that appear in the title.While different word orders will bring up different results, conversion rates for each keyword phrase will increase relevancy a lot more than simply repeating words in the keyword section.

Structured Data
Unlike Google, Amazon is focused on allowing consumers to filter their searches.Making sure that a listing has all relevant filter items included — such as color, fabric, texture, size, organic, BPA-free, and so on — will include your product in the appropriate search results.

Utilize Every Opportunity For Sales

*Amazon Business — Since Amazon SEO is all about conversions the easiest way to increase sales is to make sure your product is available to capture every possible sale.The Amazon Business program exposes products to a whole new class of buyers.Amazon Business customers enter the site through a slightly different portal where products often have bulk pricing options.The program allows employees of a participating company to place Amazon orders under a company account.

*Sales and Traffic Report — One of the most important tools a seller can utilize to understand a product’s SEO results is the Amazon Sales and Traffic Report.On this report, one can see page views and sessions (also known as impressions) as well as statistics on returning traffic.We find the most important metric is the unit session percentage.This metric shows the number of purchases made compared to the number of times people viewed the product.

Focus on Conversions
Finally, it can’t be said enough to focus on conversions.If you have a new product that needs those first sales, seriously consider using Amazon’s sponsored ad program to drive customers to its product page.Amazon’s ads are usually less expensive than Google ads, and since Amazon ads are shown to customers who are already on the site, they drive high-quality traffic.Amazon gives merchants many tools to help products sell better and it regularly rolls out new features to help sellers.After all, it wants your products to sell just as much as you do.If you follow the Amazon guidelines, you are nearly guaranteed to improve your Amazon search ranking.

Conclusion
Improving your Amazon search rank is an achievable goal.We’ve covered the key points — the most important of which are utilizing Amazon’s programs such as Amazon Prime, Amazon Business, and Amazon Sponsored Products Ads, and making sure that your product page is converting at a high rate.For consumable items, sellers should drive the initial orders to Amazon so that customers will naturally come back to your listing, whether it has an Amazon’s Choice badge or not.To acquire new buyers for a product, make sure that its Amazon page is optimized, that you are managing product reviews, and that customers can quickly get your product via the Amazon Prime network.

Source:Searchenginejournal

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy.His expert knowledge on Internet Marketing practices and techniques has earned him the title “Internet Marketing Guru“ He is also an innovator, investor and entrepreneur widely recognized by the top players in the industry.